About

“You Are Now Breathing Manually” is an expression that is meant to induce a heightened sense of self-awareness on the involuntary process of breathing for the reader. It can be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy, similar to other “trigger” expressions like “read this in my voice” and THEGAME.

Origin

On February the 14th 2001, Everything2[1] user phenylketonurics submitted a post titled “Blinking and Breathing,” in which he lamented being conscious of involuntary bodily functions.

Try to think about blinking and breathing. Come on, do it. Seriously, don’t just read this, but actually do what it says. No, Really. Think about it. Think about blinking and breathing. Welcome to my hell. Now you’re totally fucking screwed, because now that you’re thinking about this crap you have just taken the reigns of your involuntary bodily functions.

The earliest known mention of this type of of suggesstion used as trolling tactic was posted by Slashdot user ThinkAboutYourBreath[2] on February 1st, 2004:

Hello, and THINKABOUTYOURBREATHING. Yes that’s right, THINKABOUTYOURBREATHING. Why you might ask? Well it’s simple! Your brain usually takes care of breathing FOR you, but whenever you remember this, YOUMUSTMANUALLYBREATH! If you don’t you will DIE.

Spread

On January 3rd, 2005, the mind game was posted in a thread titled “You Are Now Breathing Manually” on the Xgenstudios[3] Forums. On January 13th, 2008, a “self consciousness thread” was started on the imageboard 4chan,[4] in which many users left various mental suggestions, including “you are now aware of your tongue” and “you are now manually breathing.”

On December 8th, 2009, a Facebook[5] page titled “You Are Now Breathing Manually” was launched. On July 28th, 2011, BuzzFeed[8] published a list titled “15 Ways To Really Annoy Someone,” which included mental suggestions for breathing and blinking manually. On December 7th, Redditor Cordl3ssPen submitted an animated reaction GIF titled “My friends reaction when I said ‘You are now breathing manually’” to the /r/trees[6] subreddit (shown below, left). On April 26th, 2012, Redditor Gamer_Stix submitted a animated GIF of the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants rapidly breathing titled “When I realize I am manually breathing” to the /r/gifs[7] subreddit (shown below, right).

On February 26th, 2013, NeoSeeker Forums[9] member Benedict started a thread titled “You are now breathing and blinking manually.” On June 17th, a similar thread was posted by Body Building Forums[10] member skarms.